Overhauling instructional practices

Tshwarelo Hosia | Monday May 8, 2023 06:00

It usually begins on a positive note by way of identifying and highlighting the system’s strengths. The exercise entails a walk through what makes the system tick and detailing best practices requiring continuity and reinforcement.

Harping on what works is the most likeable and appealing aspect. It is a problem free task. The simple reason is that highlighting the strengths adds credit to the system while giving a positive feedback to members of the organisation. This makes everyone involved feel worthwhile. However the next step, which involves a display of highlights of what is not working, can bring about a sense of discomfort and restlessness. The question of dealing with things which are letting down an organisation can be quite unsettling. But organisations truly and genuinely seeking to raise the quality of performance exploit limitations to develop appropriate interventions. It is worth noting that subjecting the performance of an organisation to serious scrutiny should necessarily entail recognising and accepting limitations and pitfalls. This, unfortunately, is often a no go area.

Who wants the stigma of being labelled the weakest link in the system? No one desires this. Many organisations and education systems, in particular, do not feel at ease to engage honestly on their limitations. There is a tendency to gloss over issues that really matter while giving sufficient and undue attention to peripheral matters. This means many organisations are failing a test of accountability. While it can improve the performance of an organisation, accountability is a double-edged sword. It is a risky undertaking because where it is taken seriously, it might result in job losses. The one thing that clouds judgement at accountability meetings is the issue of job preservation.

The truth, if told, why schools are not doing well can ruin careers and destroy livelihoods. The desire to stay in the government payment pay roll tends to assume precedence over the interests of students. The tendency to place a selfish personal agenda ahead of students prevents many education systems from identifying and discarding ineffective practices. From experience, when asked to account for low academic attainment levels, schools conveniently cast their eyes beyond the classroom. Who will not point elsewhere when jobs are on the line? But those with oversight responsibility should never give schools room to avoid accountability.

Learning institutions have a total responsibility over matters of teaching and learning. Their mission is teaching and teaching well. And this delicate responsibility if well planned and executed can be done with or without external support. Progress can be made if the desire to preserve jobs at the expense of students is curtailed. It is on account of securing jobs and avoiding ruffling feathers that many institutions are forced to live a lie or disregard data to avoid exposing some employees to risk. Data which is supposed to inform interventions is side-lined in order to skirt the truth. There is a tendency to pretend that there is movement or progress in the education system when in actual fact data shows stagnation or movement in the wrong direction.

A school can only claim to be moving in the right direction when there is an improvement in student gains. This is because the success of a school is measured by how well it is serving the students. Other measures of success are secondary and therefore inconsequential. Prominent American educators and instructional leaders, Rachel E. Curtis and Elizabeth A. City, continue to place their smart bets on the classroom and therefore do not support any shift of responsibility. They place all the responsibility on the shoulders of principals and their teachers. They just don’t entertain the thought that teaching and learning could be outsourced to factors outside a school environment.

Curtis and City have no doubt about the efficacy of effective classroom instructional practices as well as school good governance in raising student learning outcomes. In their view, “transformational change is possible, but only when all forces – from those teachers to board members – come together and commit themselves to making the education of children the number one priority. Number one above power struggles, political whims, or practitioner and parental excuses”. In the same token, the duo further contends that “research tells us that if a child has a quality teacher for three years, that child’s performance can increase dramatically. The emphasis here is that of continuing and unrelenting financial investments into the development of instructional experts and school managers. However, unfortunately on the ground, there are too many issues which compete for attention with classroom/student and teacher development matters. In the light of clear budgetary constraints, the education system can do better if it can get its priorities right. For instance, a choice has to be made between erecting an additional classroom block and sending teachers for further training. Much as buildings are important, they cannot on their own change learning outcomes. Properly trained teachers and not buildings can make the system move in the right direction. To address the present culture of underachievement, the education system should be bold enough to try and do things differently. It is important for the system to embrace the fact that without instructional experts in schools things will continue to get worse.

More money should be pumped into human resource development. There is an urgent need to overhaul instructional practices across subject areas. Many subjects are struggling especially in secondary schools. This means instructional practices are fundamentally flawed. There is need to consider employing and deploying subject-based coaches to model, guide and inspire teachers (especially novice teachers).

The system could kick-start the programme with core subjects. The deployment of subject specific instructional experts can lay the foundation for the development of a school-based tutorial system. Ineffective classroom practices have resulted in the mushrooming of external-based tutorial classes. Desperate parents desiring to give a lifeline to their children have been forced to part with their hard earned money to pay for remedial lessons, which can be done effectively within a school set up.

All in all change can only come if the education system is prepared to do things differently. Deployment of staff should not be informed by power struggles or liking or disliking but the motivation should be a desire to serve students better. As Curtis and City put it, the interests of the community, parents and leaders from all walks of life should never be pursued at the expense of students.